Posted on 11/06/2003 7:34:45 PM PST by Heartlander
It is such a well-written expose of the logical inconsistency of language of Darwinism as used by those who consider themselves to be accomplished evolutionary apologists. Of course the scripture itself (Romans 1:22) speaks of those who "Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools." Here, in an atheistic publication of all places, that point is now enshrined by admission that evolutionary apologists are conceptually forced to talk out of both sides of their mouth.
Reading through the postings it's really a laugh to see all the long-identified knee-jerk FR atheists and humanists chafe with the knowledge of the fact that this article comes from a site devoted to atheism. The light eventually shines into even some of the darkest places.
Just as determinists argue undeterministically, scientists believe unscientifically.
Dernavich, were he a Freeper, could also include alot of the space cadets that post here as scientist wannabes who regularly demonstrate no inherent capacity to think scientifically at all.
It is clear that, whatever his persuasion, Dernavich "gets it." It will be interesting to see how long this "heretic" survives in the church of atheistic orthodoxy.
I will personally see to it that this article gets additional significant visibility and circulation.
You are missing my point, which is that ALL of the human attributes seem to have arisen gradually by prosaic natural processes and there is no reason--Descartes's Principle or Second Law of Thermo or anything else--to think that such is impossible, especially given the utterly crushing preponderance of evidence (the link you are humoring me by reading) that it happened in straightforward cause-and-effect ways. The link was furnished to you in specific rebuttal of the following statement by you:
And as far as Ockam’s Razor – what is the theory of evolution if not an endless stream of conjecture with still-unfulfilled information gaps?
IOW, you have now made the claim that evolution is not the interpretation to be favored by an Occam's Razor analysis of the evidence. You made the claim. The Theobald article swats it out of the park. Your claim that I'm getting confused looks funny to me.
When I confronted your/Descartes's "Causal Reality" principle with the zygote case, you excused its failing on the grounds of the zygote's "potential" to become human. Where does Descartes address hidden potentials in his principle? As I already explained to you, you have simply recapitulated what many creationists before you have done to cite the evolution of complex life forms as something miraculous and inexplicable by natural processes. You are even using the same dodges to explain why your "laws" don't apply to anything but the case you cite as a miracle. It is important to do this unless you're going to accept a tornado or non-biotic formaldehyde as a miracle. (Again, the cases creationists insist "don't count" don't involve DNA. But where did Descartes say his principle only applies to DNA?)
I am not confused. If anything, you have so far failed to confuse me.
Heisenberg was driving down the Autobahn whereupon he was pulled over by a policeman. The policeman asked, "Do you know how fast you were going back there? Heisenberg replied, "No, but I know where I am."
-----------------------------
There must have been some "extraordinary conditions" then, because I have seen such fossilized "soft-bodied" evidence which Miller claims is "essentially unpreservable." Go to: http://www.creationevidence.org
The Creation Evidence Museum has a perfectly preserved---and medically verified by CT and MRI---HUMAN FINGER FOSSIL (with fossilized bone, tendons and epidermis). They have also found THOUSANDS of perfectly preserved, 3-dimensional, EARTHWORM FOSSILS.
They have also found HUMAN FOOTPRINTS in the SAME CRETACEOUS ROCK LAYER as DINOSAUR FOOTPRINTS!!! The fossils were excavated in Glen Rose, TX, home of a famous state Dinosaur Park.
BTW, the museum also has an elaborate set of CT scans which were performed at a respected hospital, of an M.L. Leddy Boot Company (founded in 1936) cowboy boot, with the fossilized bones of a partial HUMAN LEG and FOOT still in the boot. The boot itself is not fossilized.
The Creation Evidence Museum's Director's name is Dr. Carl E. Baugh (PhD), a FORMER evolution believer and teacher. According to one of Baugh's books, Gayland Leddy (a nephew of the boot company's founder) recognizes the boot style and believes the boot was made in the early 1950s.
Their "solid" evidence kind of blows "millions of years" right out the window!
The museum has numerous other such artifacts and fossils. Dr. Baugh wrote a VERY interesting and convincing book (among others) called "Why Do Men Believe EVOLUTION Against All Odds?"
Dr. Baugh has also made a very convincing 3-Video/DVD set called "Creation in Symphony: The Evidence" (geared towards non-Christians) and a 2-Video/DVD set called "Creation in Symphony: The Model" (geared towards Christians). I just got the book and both DVD sets a week ago and have only viewed the first DVD of the non-Christian DVD set and have read about half of the book. They are VERY well documented and VERY convincing.
Incidentally, I am a Christian, but until a little over a year ago, I was a "millions/billions of years" Christian. In October, 2002, Ken Ham, from Answers in Genesis, spoke at our church, making a VERY convincing argument for SIX, LITERAL 24-HOUR DAYS of CREATION. The dye was set and through HONEST investigation, I became convinced of the Bible's account of six, literal, 24 hour days.
Mr. Ham came back last October and I have put in MUCH more investigation time and am even more solidly convinced that Mr. Ham does have "The ANSWERS." Go to: http://www.answersingenesis.org
I have now seen MANY of the DVDs that Answers In Genesis has produced, almost all being presented by PhDs in sciences, e.g. Geology, Astrophysics, Microbiology, Paleontology, etc.
I am not someone who easily changes their mind on major issues. Indeed, I can only think of ONE other major concept that I have TOTALLY REVERSED my thinking on. In 1974, I had to do a non-biased simulated radio broadcast on a controversial topic for a college broadcasting class, and I picked the topic of ABORTION. I thought it would be a "piece of cake" to put what I thought were "right-wing religious nuts" to shame. But ater having to HONESTLY EXAMINE THE FACTS I became Pro-Life overnight---TOTALLY REVERSING my life-long beliefs.
I challenge all of you to HONESTLY investigate the information at the above web sites. I particularly challenge any Geologists and/or Paleontologists to buy the DVDs and books and read the information on their respective web sites and HONESTLY investigate the information. AFTER such an investigation, I would like to hear what arguments and clear and convincing evidence anyone has which would refute the findings and conclusions that Mr. Ham and Dr. Baugh have made.
From my own investigation, I have found that the BIBLE'S ACCOUNT of the SIX, LITERAL, 24-HOUR DAYS of CREATION is TRUE---not only beyond a REASONABLE DOUBT---but beyond virtually ANY DOUBT and that the ODDS AGAINST MILLIONS/BILLIONS of YEARS and EVOLUTION from a LOWER LIFE FORM are SO ASTRONOMICALLY HIGH, they are IMPOSSIBLE!
The sentence "But ater having to HONESTLY EXAMINE THE FACTS I became Pro-Life overnight---TOTALLY REVERSING my life-long beliefs." should have been:
"But after having to HONESTLY EXAMINE THE FACTS I became Pro-Life overnight---TOTALLY REVERSING my life-long beliefs."
The Creationists and Evolutionists have the VERY SAME FACTS and the VERY SAME EVIDENCE to examine. But when you put on "Biblical glasses" to examine the facts and evidence, it ALL FITS TOGETHER and it ALL MAKES SENSE! T-Rex and man were created on Day 6! And that's why you find:
(1) DINOSAUR TRACKS and HUMAN FOOTPRINTS in the SAME CRETACEOUS ROCK LAYER,
(2) Over 1,100 (circa 500-1500 A.D.) engraved ceremonial BURIAL stones, ALMOST 1/3 of which ACCURATELY DEPICT DINOSAURS, e.g. an Inca warriour riding and attempting to kill a PERFECTLY-DRAWN TRICERATOP DINOSAUR or a warriour trying to stab the head of a T-REX, which, had they not SEEN DINOSAURS, they could NOT POSSIBLY have known what a TRICERATOP or T-REX LOOK like
(3) etc.
As Ken Ham asks:
If the Bible were true, what would you expect to find?...
Billions of DEAD things,
Buried in Rock Layers,
Layed down by water,
All over the earth.
And what do you find?
Billions of DEAD things,
Buried in Rock Layers,
Layed down by water,
All over the earth.
PMFJI, but me & Heartlander went back & forth on this over a couple threads, including this one. Do a search for "hydrogen" early in this thread. Basically your argument commits the fallacy of composition: assuming that no entity can exhibit a quality other than a simple sum of the qualities of its components.
Consider this analogy:
Oxygen is a flammable gas. Hydrogen is an explosive gas. Put them together and you get water: a substance whose mass is equal to the mass of two hydrogen atoms plus one oxygen atom - just like you'd expect. However, water is neither a flammable gas like oxygen, nor an explosive gas like hydrogen. Nor is it 2/3 explosive & 1/3 flammable, owing to there being twice as many hydrogen atoms as oxygens. It's positively flame-retardant, and it's a liquid to boot! Now how can that be?
Water is a higher-order entity than mere atoms. A molecule of water is made up of three atoms. There's no extra, magical entity added to the atoms to produce this higher-order organization called a "molecule of water". There's no mystical or Ideal "wetness" quality that's injected into it to make it wetter than the three atoms taken alone are. But because of the relationship of the atoms to each other, this higher-order entity behaves radically differently than the three atoms taken alone.
You seem to think this can't be possible without some supernatural person removing the Ideal Forms called "flammability" and "explosiveness" from the individual atoms and, in their place, injecting some kind of Ideal Form called "wetness" into the resulting molecule. That is what you're saying when you assert that conscious beings cannot arise naturally out of mindless parts.
Your cowboy boot with foot bones is just that. No one says that some mineralization cannot occur quickly in the right conditions. Your human footprints with dinosaur tracks are not human footprints.
The only alleged finger I have previously encountered on these threads looks more like a coprolite, but as it was not backed by such claims as you are making ("with fossilized bone, tendons and epidermis") feel free to present it in more detail.
Ken Ham and AiG are just another set from the same cloth, only upside down. The nicest thing I can say is that sometimes they walk away from some of the sillier stuff the other organizations commit. From Arguments we think creationists should NOT use:
‘Paluxy tracks prove that humans and dinosaurs co-existed.’ Some prominent creationist promoters of these tracks have long since withdrawn their support. Some of the allegedly human tracks may be artefacts of erosion of dinosaur tracks obscuring the claw marks. There is a need for properly documented research on the tracks before we would use them to argue the coexistence of humans and dinosaurs. However there is much evidence that dinosaurs and humans co-existed—see Q&A: Dinosaurs.Not that I don't think that AiG is a bunch of charlatans. Don't get me started on their presentations of Ambulocetus and Pakicetus. However, even they can see through Carl Baugh where you have failed to do so. Your own investigations may have been "honest," but you were an honest all-day sucker....
Many of Carl Baugh’s creation ‘evidences’. Sorry to say, AiG thinks that he’s well meaning but that he unfortunately uses a lot of material that is not sound scientifically. So we advise against relying on any ‘evidence’ he provides, unless supported by creationist organisations with reputations for Biblical and scientific rigour. Unfortunately, there are talented creationist speakers with reasonably orthodox understandings of Genesis (e.g. Kent Hovind) who continue to promote some of the Wyatt and Baugh ‘evidences’ despite being approached on the matter (ed. note: see our Maintaining Creationist Integrity, our response to Hovind’s reply to this article).
I also switched. The key is, as you say, honesty when examining the facts. When the absolute impossibility of evolution is no big deal, then the facts haven't been examined honestly.
YOU SEEM TO HAVE NEGLECTED ITALIC AND STRIKETHROUGH AND COLOR. WHAT'S WRONG WITH THEM?
Does this include the typesetting theory of truth?
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